Re: Problems with .gnome-desktop and recursiveness.

[Erik Bågfors <bagfors pdc kth se>]

On Tue, Oct 10, 2000 at 01:46:56PM +0200, Preben Randhol wrote:
> 
> We were backing up a users catalog by doing: 
> 
> scp -r username otherhost:~/Backup/
> 
> from the /home directory as we wanted the entire user directory.  As
> there were a lot of Mb to backup we left it to finished and returned the
> next day.
> 
> The next day we recieved an angry call from the administrator on the
> other machine as the disc had been filled up entirely. As we looked we
> quickly found out that due to the .gnome-desktop and it's link "Home
> directory" the backup had looped over and over and copying all the
> directories that scp handled before reaching .gnome-desktop again.
> 
> I'm not sure how serious this is nor how to fix it, but I thought it was
> worth bringing it up so that you are aware of this.
> 

Do your backups smarter!!  Check out rsync or at least try this:
tar cf - username | ssh otherhost "cd ~/Backup; tar xf -"
(see man tar for better options that just c and x)

/Erik
-- 
Erik Bågfors               | Center for Parallel Computers
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